Taste & Flavour | Wharekauhau Country Estate, Martinborough (New Zealand)

An exceptional New Zealand culinary experience, wherever you dream.

Whoever you are, and wherever you dream about escaping to great culinary adventures, Wharekauhau Country Estate now delivers the reality, direct to your coffee table. Their sumptuous new book, with astounding photography by Grant Sheehan (New Zealand Photographer of the Year 2009), brilliantly illustrates both the food and daily life of this grand estate that’s truly a place apart – but in the heart of the fertile Martinborough wine region, one of New Zealand’s top gourmet destinations. 

Recapturing the gracious lifestyle of a bygone era, Wharekauhau is situated on a 5,000 acre working sheep station. Framed by the Rimutaka Ranges to the west and the
dramatic coastline of Palliser Bay, the lodge is surrounded by an ancient forest, spectacular beaches, bountiful rivers and tranquil lakes that facilitate endless guest opportunities for recreation. With sumptuously furnished and charming cottages amid ocean views dotted throughout the extensive grounds, you can enjoy true country living in what is billed as “one of the most spectacular stations in New Zealand”.

Winner of the New Zealand Lamb and Beef Award 2010, Wharekauhau’s signature dish is their succulent Texel lamb, bred and reared on their own lush year-round
grasses and flowering herbage. Texel lamb uniquely marbles fine, sweet fat through its flesh, exactly the way Japan’s famed Wagyu beef does, giving unrivalled lusciousness and flavour that wins every competition; as a recipe featured in this superb book you might experience it as coffee-rubbed Wharekauhau Texel lamb with smoked vanilla and syrah sauce.

Other recipes featured in this opulent book – and on Wharekauhau’s table of regional fare – include a salad of native fern shoots with figs and venison bacon; West Coast
white bait; salmon consommé with crayfish ravioli; wildcaught prawns with Vietnamese-mint sorbet and sweet corn cakes; Bluff oysters with ponzu dressing and caviar pearls; hemp-oil salmon confit on celeriac puree, or wild honeycomb
ice cream. Naturally New Zealand’s famed venison, game and game birds appear with delicious regularity.

Wharekauhau’s pesticide-free gardens produce much that complements the top-class produce featured. Salads, herbs, tomatoes, asparagus, berry fruits, even watercress, are all grown on-site. Wharekauhau’s Book of Taste and Flavour also features a section where you’ll meet their carefully chosen artisan suppliers of bread and oil, fruit and vegetables and a remarkable range of regional and national cheeses. A final section introduces the incredible realities of the natural splendors that surround and complement your experience of Wharekauhau Country Estate and Lodge.

For chefs all around the world, and for dreamers who can’t yet be travellers, Wharekauhau’s Book of Taste and Flavour brings home the epitome of the Wairarapa culinary experience, direct from Wharekauhau Country Estate and Lodge. Available from www.wharekauhau.co.nz and specialty stockists worldwide.